William Shakespeare
Sonnets Unit
Actor
Poet
Dramatist
Sonnet 29 Summary
The speaker of this sonnet says he's completely bummed and that he's been bawling his
eyes out over his pathetic life and all of his misfortune. He says he's all alone and feels
alienated and unsuccessful. He seems to believe even God is ignoring him and won't
return his prayers.
He says he wishes he was rich and had something to hope for. Also, he totally wishes he
was good looking, popular with friends, and talented like some other guys he knows. But
he's not, which is why nothing seems fun anymore—not even the stuff he used to enjoy
doing.
Just as our bummed out speaker is thinking about all the stuff he used to really enjoy, he
suddenly remembers a special person in his life and his mood begins to shift in a big,
dramatic way. The mere thought of this unnamed mystery person makes our speaker so
unbelievably happy and hopeful that he feels like a bird (a "lark," to be exact) that rises
up and sings to the heavens.
Finally, our speaker concludes that, hey, life is pretty great after all. Even though this
unnamed person isn't exactly around right now, just thinking about his or her "sweet
love" makes our speaker feel like the luckiest guy ever—so lucky that he wouldn't trade
places with anyone else for all the money and power in the world.
Sonnet 30
Sonnet 30 is a tribute to the poet's friend -- and likely his lover -- whom many believe to
be the Earl of Southampton. Sonnet 29 proclaims that the young man is the poet's
redeemer and this theme continues in the above sonnet. The poet's sorrowful recollections
of dead friends are sparked by the lover's absence and can be crushed only by thoughts of
his lover, illustrating the poet's dependence on his dear friend for spiritual and emotional
support.
Notice Shakespeare's use of partial alliteration over several lines to enhance the texture
and rhythm of the sonnet. Others could be cited, but here is one example:
When to | the Sess | ions of | sweet si | lent thought
I summ | on up | remem | brance of | things past...
Notes
sessions (1): the sitting of a court. The court imagery is continued with 'summon up' in
line 2. The court motif is used several times by Shakespeare - note Othello 3.3.140:
"Keep leets and law days, and in session sit/With mediations lawful?" (Leets = court
sessions).
old woes (4): By replaying his 'old woes' over in his mind, the poet is wasting precious
time that could be spent thinking more joyous thoughts. Hence 'my dear time's waste.'
love's long since cancell'd woe (7): is the sorrow the poet had once felt over the loss of
his close friends; loss that has dulled over the years but now returns as he thinks of the
past.
And moan...sight (8): Some scholars interpret this line to mean 'I lament the cost to me
of many a lost sigh.' "'Sight' for 'sigh' was archaic by Shakespeare's time and seems only
to have been used for the sake of rhyme (see OED). Sighing was considered deleterious
to health; compare 2 Henry VI 3.2.61-3: 'blood-consuming sighs . . ./Look pale as
primrose with blood-drinking sighs', and 47.4." (Blakemore Evans, 142). However, the
ordinary word 'sight' also makes sense in this context; that is, the poet has lost many
things that he has seen and loved.
dear friend (13): Shakespeare's first use of the term 'dear friend' in the Sonnets.
All losses...end. (14): His friend is as great as the sum of all the many things the poet
sought but did not find.
Sonnet 71
You've heard it all before: gather ye rosebuds, live like you're dying, live free, die
hard…or something.
The point is, we're all quite familiar with the old cliché… Shakespeare has a habit (okay,
an awesome habit) of taking a cliché and turning it on its head. If you take Sonnet 73 on
the whole, it's a poem about how death makes us love all the more, because we know that
love will one day be gone. But if you read the first twelve lines, the poem is almost
entirely about how awful it is to grow old and crusty and die. In fact, the sheer
inevitability and awfulness of death is what makes us love all the stronger. So yes, we
should live free and love hard.
Sonnet 73
Before we go into summarizing Sonnet 73, we should make one thing clear from the
start: not much really happens in this poem as far as ideas are concerned. Basically,
you've got one idea (the speaker is growing old, and it stinks) that runs from line 1 all the
way down to line 12.
In lines 13-14, you get a different idea, though it's related to the first one. The speaker
tells the person he is talking to that, because he (the speaker) is going to die soon, the
other person should treasure their love all the more.
It's a lot less about what the poet says and a lot more about how he says it. In this
case, how the poet says it makes all the difference. That's because Sonnet 73 is really all
about the poet showing off—by using a different main metaphor in each of the three
quatrains.
In quatrain 1, the main idea is all about the changing of the seasons: the speaker
compares his middle-aged self to a tree that is losing its leaves in fall. In quatrain 2, he
changes imagery. Now, the speaker compares himself to a fading sunset. Then, in
quatrain 3, he changes things up again, this time comparing himself to the last glow of a
fire in the process of burning out.
Throughout all this time, we haven't heard anything about love, or the specific
relationship between the speaker and whomever he is speaking to. So when the
concluding couplet comes around, it gets to have a nice surprise effect by revealing
exactly the details that have remained hidden until now.
Sonnet 116
The poet makes his point clear from line 1: true love always perseveres, despite any
obstacles that may arise. He goes on to define love by what it doesn’t do, claiming that it
stays constant, even though people and circumstances may change. Love never dies, even
when someone tries to destroy it. Rather than being something that comes and goes, love
is eternal and unchanging – so much so that the poet compares it to the North Star, which
never moves in the sky and guides lost ships home. This metaphorical star is mysterious
and perhaps incomprehensible, even though we can chart its location.
Moving on to a new image, love isn’t at the beck and call of time (or time’s
consequences, age and death); mortality isn’t an issue for true love, which doesn’t fade
even when youth and beauty disappear. Love doesn’t change as the days go by; rather, it
remains strong until the lover’s dying day (or beyond…).
Finally, the poet stakes his own reputation on this definition, boldly claiming that if
anyone can prove him wrong, he’ll eat his words. That is to say, if this idea of love turns
out to be wrong, then he’ll take back everything he wrote and it’ll be as though it never
existed. Furthermore, if this specific portrayal of love is somehow proved to be the wrong
one, then nobody, as far as the poet is concerned, has ever loved at all.
Sonnet 130
Sonnet 130 is like a love poem turned on its head. Usually, if you were talking about your
beloved, you would go out of your way to praise her, to point all the ways that she is the
best. In this case, though, Shakespeare spends this poem comparing his mistress's
appearance to other things, and then telling us how she doesn't measure up to them. He
goes through a whole laundry list, giving us details about the flaws of her body, her
smell, even the sound of her voice. Then, at the end, he changes his tune and tells us
about his real and complete love for her.
William Shakespeare Sonnets
Sonnets are fourteen-line lyric poems, traditionally written in iambic pentameter - that is,
in lines ten syllables long, with accents falling on every second syllable, as in:
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
Sonnets are formal poems and consist of 14 lines (3 quatrains and a couplet).
Sequence & themes of Shakespeare's Sonnets
William Shakespeare's sonnets are stories about a handsome boy, or rival poet, and the
mysterious and aloof "dark" lady they both love. The sonnets fall into three clear
groupings: Sonnets 1 to 126 are addressed to, or concern, a young man; Sonnets 127-152
are addressed to, or concern, a dark lady (dark in the sense of her hair, her facial features,
and her character), and Sonnets 153-154 are fairly free adaptations of two classical Greek
poems. The most popular of the William Shakespeare Sonnets are Sonnets 18, 29, 116,
126 and 130.
Quatrain –
Couplet -